Kindle’s 10 Most Wanted August 25 2010

Since the US Kindle store first opened in 2007, users of Amazon’s electronic book reading device have always wanted more.

More books, that is.

They’ve gotten it: in not even three years, the store has grown from fewer than 100,000 titles to over 650,000 titles.

That’s not enough, though. :)

While there is a wide variety of books, people want specific ones. Many readers want to convert their paper libraries to e-book form. Who wouldn’t want your favorite book with you to read again, wherever and whenever you wanted?

So, what are the Kindle’s 10 Most Wanted?

Based on on-line forums, we can identify a few of the buzziest: the Harry Potter books; To Kill a Mockingbird;and Fahrenheit 451. In all three of these cases, the lack of availability appears to be a specific choice. While there recently appears to be some hope in the case of J.K. Rowling, Ray Bradbury has made public statements (repeatedly) that he doesn’t like e-books.

Outside of those, though, how do we know which books people most want?

KindleIQ.com, a relatively new website resource for Kindle owners, has a “New to Kindle” notification service. Readers can put in a book title, and receive a free e-mail when that book has been “Kindleized”.

In the ten days or so the service has been available, over one thousand tracking requests have been made.

This one has the unusual circumstances of having been available in the Kindle store, but having been withdrawn. That’s often temporary (sometimes to make fixes), and some of her other books are available.

#3 Crimes Against Liberty: an Indictment of President Barack Obama
by David Limbaugh
published August 23 2010

This one just came out in paper, and the publisher does have books in the Kindle store, so I’d expect people to get those e-mail alerts pretty soon.

#2 When Christ and His Saints Slept
by Sharon Kay Penman
last paper edition published in 1996

Another hefty book (but only 784 pages) ;) , this one is an historical novel about 12th Century England. This is the second book by Penman on the list.

#1 The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
last paper edition released in 2004

People have been asking about this one since the Kindle was first released…no surprise to see it as number one. This is a case of author concern about the format, apparently. On her website, Nifffenegger says,

“I am not opposed to the existence of e-books; I know lots of people are wildly enthusiastic about them. But I have spent my life working with books as an art form and I am devoted to physical books.”

and

“I don’t know when or if my books will become e-books. Writing me hostile e-mail about this will not hasten my desire.”

Essentially, she seems to be waiting for the format to improve.

I expect this to be a fluid list until more people are using it. It may be different by the time you read this. I plan to return to this regularly, and I expect with a month or so, it will have settled down. We can reasonably say that publishers are losing sales right now on these titles by not having them in e-book form.

*NOTE: I have not included books which have not yet been released in paper. It’s very common for there to be a pre-order of a paper edition, and no Kindle edition listed. That doesn’t mean that a Kindle edition won’t be available by the time the paperbook is published. If I included those, #2 would have been Treachery in Death by J.R. Robb (due February 22, 2011, #4 would have been The Confession by John Grisham (due October 26, 2010), #5 would have been Wolfsbane by Patricia Briggs (due November 2, 2010), and #8 would have been Briggs’ Masques (due September 28, 2010).

As the service is used more (which this post might encourage), I fully expect we’ll see several of the top ten slot taken by Harry Potter books…until they are released.

The first people using the service were probably the Kindlintelligensia. :) They know that they’ll hear about a deal to release the Harry Potter books in the news (and definitely in the blogosphere), and probably don’t feel like they need to sign up for a notification. It’s the books they wouldn’t know about otherwise that attract them.

I do think it’s likely we’ll get the Harry Potter books either this holiday season or after the release of the last movie next year. There was a little buzz about that earlier this year that makes it seem more possible.

Thanks for the post Bufo. KimdleIQ is a nice web site. I get freebie notifications from jungle search, never bothered with any other searches with them. KindleIQ seems to make it very easy to sign up for notifications.

Yes, I have some correspondence with the folks at KindleIQ…same people as Jungle-Search. I’ve made some suggestions, which they’ve tended to adopt. They do a great job without me, though. :) I’m not part of them (I’d disclose that), we just correspond.

It’s interesting seeing the difference between UK and US sites. The Robert Graves books are available on the Kindle in the UK store so maybe the respective publishers have different ideas about where they want to go. Also, I thought it was interesting that Niffenegger’s new book ‘Her fearful symmetry’ is available in the Kindle format (perhaps that is just in the UK store – haven’t checked amazon.com).
It’s obviously not a blanket policy of hers or maybe her UK publishers have different opinions..

Yes, there are different availabilities. It might not just be a matter of ideas, but of rights. It’s possible the British publisher has bought the e-book rights to Graves’ books, and the American publisher hasn’t yet.

As to Her Fearful Symmetry, that is also available at Amazon.com. That’s been one of the inconsistencies. My guess is that the author signed different contracts, and one gives her control and one doesn’t…